Inauguration Student Protest is Full of Disappointment

A student from the politics club at Galileo, helped organize a second protest against President Trump on inauguration day, January 20th, with the idea of protesting on Inauguration Day originating from students from Leadership High School. The first student protest this school year, held after Trump was elected President on November 10th, which was organized by Galileo student, junior Emily M., resulted in close to 1000 students from all over the SFUSD attending. However, only 200 students attended the second protest.

One of the reasons some believe the second protest was not as strongly attended was because it was not well promoted. Some flyers could be seen round Galileo, but social media was used much less in spreading the word around. “I think the guy just posted flyers around the school, but I didn’t see anything on social media,” says an anonymous protester.

Other students seemed to agree that the protest were not very well planed out. “It seemed like there was no organization in the protest,” said a Galileo student referring to the Inauguration Day protest. Galileo students were supposed to meet at the main entrance at 9:30 and leave immediately. Instead there was some time stalling and the students didn’t leave until the beginning of third period.“I know leading is hard, but someone with better public speaking skills and more knowledge would have been better at being the leader,” said an attending student protester.

“My expectations for this protest were for the participation to be way better and bigger than what we actually had. I figured that since it was Inauguration Day we would have a larger participation,” said Emily M. It was estimated that only about 40 students from Galileo marched in the second protest, compared to over 100 in the first protest.

In addition to the number of students being lower than expected, many students were protesting for the wrong reasons. Some used it as an excuse to skip school and others protested because there was nothing better to do. “I was talking with the person next to me about the protest and I found out he was only protesting because he didn’t want to be in class,” said a Galileo student.